Cretaceo- Tertiary of Neic Zealand. 497 



surface of the Amuri Limestone which I critically examined last 

 March for the first time seems to be corroborative of Hutton's view. 

 The discordance is as well marked as that between the Cretaceous and 

 Eocene of South England. 



Dr. Marshall, by insisting that the absence of a marked physical 

 break at Waipara between the Tertiary and Cretaceous strata is an 

 evidence of a Cretdceo-Tertiary succession, seems to have overlooked 

 the fact that the physical unconformity between the Cretaceous and 

 Eocene in England is so slight that it is not visible in single sections, 

 and is ot\\j capable of proof on palaeontological grounds. Fui'thermore, 

 in England the Eocene nowhere extends beyond the Chalk outcrop, 

 thereby showing a closer physical relationship between these 

 formations than exists in Kew Zealand, where the Lower Tertiary 

 strata rest in most places on formations older than the Cretaceous. 



It is worthy of note that the places where the Lower Tertiary 

 system of New Zealand rests on the Cretaceous are few and widely 

 separated. In most places the Tertiaries rest on older rocks. This 

 widespread overlap beyond the Cretaceous outcrop is in itself 

 significant. It is obvious that when the subsidence which ushered 

 in the Tertiary took place, the first areas to be invaded by the 

 Eocene seas would be the Cretaceous basins. The remarkable overlap 

 beyond the Cretaceous outcrop seen throughout New Zealand may 

 be therefore taken as an evidence of widespread and prolonged, if 

 not rapid, subsidence at the close of the Cretaceous ; while the large 

 proportion of living species in the lowest marine beds of the Tertiary 

 system may not unreasonably be held to mark a wider gap than that 

 between the Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary of England. 



Dr. Marshall's correlation of the Hutchinson Quarry Beds with the 

 Weka Pass Stone is entirely at variance with the palseontological 

 evidence. The Hutchinson Quarry Beds are intimately related to 

 the Oamaru Stone, and contain a rich and distinctive fauna of 

 Brachiopods, Pectens, Corals, and Bryozoans, that led Sir James 

 Hector, Sir Julius von Haast, Captain Hutton, Professor Cox, and 

 Mr. Alexander McKay without hesitation to correlate them with the 

 Mount Brown or Mount Donald Beds, which lie 300 or 400 feet above 

 the Weka Pass Stone in the typical sections in North Canterbury. 

 All the palaeontological evidence that has accumulated during the 

 past twenty-five years has merely served to confirm the soundness 

 of their correlation. 



The Hutchinson Quarry Beds, consisting of glauconitic sands, 

 tuffs, and limestones, together with the closely associated Oamaru 

 Stone, are in my opinion the equivalents of the Kakanui Limestones 

 = Ototara Stone = Waitaki Stone = Waikao Stone = Mount Somers 

 Stone = Mount Brown and Mount Donald Stones in North Canterbury. 



A critical review of the evidence seems to establish the view that 

 we have two coal-bearing formations in New Zealand, as so long 

 maintained by Captain Hutton, namely, the Waipara System, of 

 Cretaceous age, and the Oamaru System, of Lower Tertiary age. 

 Each formation begins with terrestrial beds containing seams of coal 

 and closes with a calcareous marine horizon. The Cretaceous System 

 rests on older Secondary and Palaeozoic rocks, the Oamaruian on the 



DECADE V. — VOL. IX. — NO. XI. 32 



